Zone Expansion in a Wireless Environment

[euphline]

I have an M1G in the house. Currently entirely hardwired. Of course, wireless would be handy, but I'm generally not a huge fan of wireless. That said, it would be nice to extend the reach of my system out to my detached garage. (About 100 feet from the house).

Is there any way to deploy a zone expander over a wireless link, so that I can hardwire within the garage, but backhaul over wireless?

-jbn

 

[blmxm]

I have an M1G in the house. Currently entirely hardwired. Of course, wireless would be handy, but I'm generally not a huge fan of wireless. That said, it would be nice to extend the reach of my system out to my detached garage. (About 100 feet from the house).

Is there any way to deploy a zone expander over a wireless link, so that I can hardwire within the garage, but backhaul over wireless?

-jbn

If I understand your post correctly you want to be able to hardwire the garage on a standard input expansion unit, and then have a wireless link back to the main panel?
If that is the case, I have no knowledge of how to do so. However I can tell you that I have a M1XRF2G with the ground plane installed and I never played with it's location which is not certainly ideal, but I get good transmitter levels throughout the 2 acres I live on. I walked the entire perimeter while doing a level check, and there were only a few areas that fell below 4, and they were ~150 feet from my house and under the high voltage lines at the edge of my property. Most of the walk test had levels of 8 plus as I recall. If you were to bias the receivers placement for your garage, I'm sure you could get good signal levels. Perhaps you have a reason you don't want to go with the wireless receiver, but mine has been rock solid.

 

[ddennerline]

I had same reservations about wireless also. The decision came down to do I want to spend lots of extra money and time for an unspecified/unknown amount of risk. I have a mixed hardwired/wireless system. All doors are hardwired because I don’t want any risk of transmission failure. For windows, I installed wireless GE TX-1010-01-1 DesignLine sensor that protects both halves of double hung window with one sensor. I use hardwired 24x7 glass breaks in every room where the wireless windows sensors are installed. I installed hardwired motions too. I just installed a NX-650 to protect shed which is 150ft from house. I mounted my M1XRF2G in upstairs closet with no ground plane antenna. It’s been operational for only short amount of time through and no false alarms yet.

 

[pipeman]

You know, if you're unsure about wireless, (include me in that group), then you probably will be unhappy with that wireless link. 100 feet isn't really that far, unless you have some insurmountable obstacles. I spend a fair amount of time in my (detached by 200') garage, so I ran extra wiring/conduit for computer, TV, music, intercom, etc.
I also had a walk-in/break-in at my garage and lost a few thousand in tools. Now my Elk closes any open overhead doors and auto arms that area at quittin' time. Really an insult to mess with a man's garage

Something to think about.

 

[sic0048]

I also think that using wireless sensors is going to be a better solution that trying a wireless transmission of the mainbuss.

The wireless contacts are a known variable. They are well tested and also send their signal out with strong encryption. Trying to rig some sort of wireless bridge for the main buss is not supported, probably hasn't been tested by anyone, and would send your buss signals out with potential encryption/jaming loopholes. If someone was able to crack into the main buss, they would have access to the entire system, not just the garage.

If you are that worried about the garage that you want to include it in your security system, then I would think you would want to be able to count on it performing when needed - without putting the main house in jeapordy either. IMHO that means using the equipment as it was designed for. Hopefully there are not a tremendous amount of contacts needed in the garage and could be done for a reasonable price.

 

[pipeman]

I was not very clear. My point is to figure out a way to get wire, maybe multiple wires, from the house to the garage. Then you can have local expansion, etc., in the garage.
If you only have need for a sensor or three, I agree with sic0048.

Sonny

 

[gatchel]

I think Spanky confirmed in another post that wireless communication of the Elk data bus will not work due to the delays involved in the conversion to wireless and back again and then the other way.

I would go with wireless sensors and a receiver or get a conduit or cable from building to building.

 

[cliffs]

I have a detached garage and use wireless. I have a smoke detector and garage door
status zones. You can use as many zones as your wireless expanders capacity.
They are usually in 8 or 16 zone sizes. The wireless should work at 100 ft.

The wireless modules are transmit only, so to switch items remotely
you will another system(I use X10).

I have been using this system for 4 years now without any problems. If one of the
batteries is low it will give you a message. The smoke detector batteries do need
replacing periodically. The switch type batteries are supposed to be good for 5 years.

Cliffs

 

[signal15]

The wireless contacts are a known variable. They are well tested and also send their signal out with strong encryption.

Are you sure about this? I've seen references to "code rolling" and other such things, but no hard data that supports this. There is no bi-directional communication between the sensors and the receivers, it's just one way. When you program in the sensor, it's a 6 character hex code. If this is an encryption key rather than an ID, then there are 16.7 million possible keys for each sensor. If one had the equipment to read and store the messages sent by the sensor, it would be trivial to brute force the code to each sensor. 16.7 million is not a lot of codes when you throw a dual core processor at it. And if it's an ID that is transmitted in the message, then no brute forcing is required.

In any case, I use wired and wireless. I decided that it's not worth my time to run wires if it's a situation where it's too much work. I'm happy with the wireless stuff. Criminals don't have the equipment to read the codes and do stuff with them, and I haven't seen any jammers on the market that would jam that frequency, although it would be simple to build one.

The only thing with wireless is you won't be able to put a keypad in that detached garage. They need to be wired.

Then again, running a PVC conduit 100 feet really isn't much work either, and you can pull a bundle of wires to use for things other than security (audio, video, network, etc).

 

[euphline]

I see the lack of a "wireless backhaul" in the databus to be a technology gap that should (at some point) be filled. In the meantime, I will probably run new conduit out to the garage. The inability to have a keypad in an outbuilding is meaningful, when one fills it with sensors. If I were to enter the garage with the house armed, I would be almost guaranteed of setting off the system - as I probably couldn't navigate the obstacles in the yard quickly enough to get into the house, to the keypad, and disarm it before it alerts. There is little in the world that annoys me as much as false alarms. I have a neighbor whose car alarm goes off several times a week. I try very hard not to contribute to the noise pollution.

For what it's worth, the garage electric appears to be romex, direct buried. (On the list of things to determine - is it rated for direct burial, and how deep did they run it?) There is some flex conduit through which phone line ran in the past, but it's been disconnected on both ends due to bad workmanship. Me thinks my best bet is to run brand new conduit and enjoy the ability to extend other networks into the garage in the days ahead.

-jbn

 

[signal15]

There is some flex conduit through which phone line ran in the past, but it's been disconnected on both ends due to bad workmanship. Me thinks my best bet is to run brand new conduit and enjoy the ability to extend other networks into the garage in the days ahead.

-jbn

You mean the phone line has been disconnected and the wire is still there? Or the wire is gone? Or the whole conduit is wrecked?

If the line is still in the conduit, then you can use it to pull your new wire through with. If there is no wire in the conduit and it's too long for a fishtape, or has weird turns that make a fishtape not possible, you can do this to get wire through it:

- Get some mason string
- Get a small ball that barely fits in the conduit, or make one out of black electrical tape
- Attach to end of mason string
- Have one person at one end stick the ball in the hole and get ready to feed the string
- Attach a shop vac to the other end of the conduit and turn it on
- Smile really big

My buddy told me about this. He used to run fiber in huge buildings, and the corrugated conduit presented major problems when trying to jam a few hundred feet of fishtape down them. So he came up with this, and it worked awesome.